Blood Assassin (The Sentinels #2)(38)

She lifted her hand to press her fingers to his lips, halting his protest. “Not yet.”

Without warning he nipped the tip of her finger, his eyes darkening with a blast of arousal he made no effort to hide.

“I knew you were going to be trouble the minute I saw you,” he murmured, his low voice brushing over her skin like a caress.

She frowned, glaring into his hard, starkly beautiful face. Hell. He was supposed to be the aloof, untouchable Sentinel. The distant warrior she’d sworn had rejected her for the last time.

She couldn’t possibly fight her aching need when he wasn’t playing by the rules.

“You don’t even remember our first meeting,” she accused, her treacherous fingers lingering on his surprisingly sensuous lips.

His hands smoothed down her back, his caress heart-stoppingly tender.

It was something that had always fascinated her.

How such a strong, lethally trained Sentinel could possess a touch delicate enough to carve the exquisite wooden figurines that filled the nursery at Valhalla or make a woman melt in desire.

She shivered as he cupped her ass with an intimacy that made her breath tangle in her throat.

“I remember every second of our first meeting,” he informed her, the movement of his lips beneath her fingers oddly erotic. “I’d been away from Valhalla for almost fifty years and I was anxious to return to my favorite fishing spot by the lake. But instead of the peace and quiet I was expecting I discovered a dark-haired, green-eyed vixen who was wearing a dangerously skimpy tank top and short-shorts.” His gaze drifted down to the low cut of her neckline. “You looked like a wood sprite.”

His low words vividly conjured the magic of the day.

She’d escaped from her training so she could finish her latest romance novel. It’d been a rare autumn day filled with sunshine and just a hint of frost in the air. The sort of day that begged a young woman to play hooky.

Knowing that Inhera, the leader of the psychics and clairvoyants, would send someone in search of her, Serra had hidden among the reeds that surrounded the lake, feeling deliciously rebellious.

And then . . . Fane had appeared.

“I glanced up from the book I was reading and I was dazzled,” she told him, her fingers moving to stroke the exotic tattoo that wrapped around his thick neck. “You were the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.”

He arched a brow. “Beautiful?”

“You are.” She smiled with rueful resignation. “But then you grunted at me and before I could even say hi you were storming away in a huff.”

“Because I felt like a perv,” he muttered, a shocking heat staining his high cheekbones.

She blinked in confusion. “What?”

“You were so young.” He shook his head. “Too young.”

“I was over eighteen.”

“Barely.” His eyes lowered to the swell of her breasts, his eyes dilating with a hunger he couldn’t disguise. “Christ, all I could think about was laying you back on the grass and peeling away that teeny tiny top.” His hands skimmed up her hips to slide beneath the edge of her sweater.

She hissed in shock, but he held his searching gaze even as she shuddered at the feel of his hands on her bare skin.

They scalded. Tormented.

Aroused.

“Then you spent the next fifteen years pretending I didn’t exist,” she muttered.

He gave a short, humorless laugh, his hands moving up to cup the heavy weight of her breasts.

“That pretense is well and truly over.”

Serra swallowed a groan, her senses sizzling with electric anticipation beneath his bold seduction. His fingers found the straining tips of her nipples, teasing them with a blissful skill.

Oh . . . God.

This was her fantasy. Her deepest dream made real.

But even as her back arched with blatant invitation, an annoying voice whispered in the back of her mind that at this precise moment he would be in Tibet if she hadn’t been in danger.

“Shattered by the sword of Damocles that hangs over my head?” she rasped.

“Shattered by fate.” He lowered his head to brush a light kiss on her mouth, his thumbs stroking her nipples with increasing urgency. White-hot excitement curled through the pit of her stomach. “A fate I’m tired of fighting.”

“I’m not sure what that means,” she breathed, her hands grabbing his shoulders. To push him away? Or yank him closer?

She hadn’t decided.

He teased her with another brush of his mouth, lingering just long enough to make her ache for a deeper kiss.

“Neither do I,” he admitted in rough tones. “I suppose we’ll find out together.”

“But—”

He gave her lower lip a punishing nip. “Are you always this chatty when a man’s trying to get you naked?”

Chatty? She narrowed her gaze.

“Do you always have such trouble getting a woman naked?”

He lifted his head to reveal a smile that sent a tingle down her spine. That smile warned of all sorts of wicked pleasure.

“Ah. A challenge.” With a strength only a Sentinel could claim, Fane had her tossed over his shoulder and was headed to the bedroom.

She gave a choked gasp of disbelief. “Caveman.”

Entering the bedroom he lowered her onto the bed, gazing down at her with a searing intensity as he bent down to tug off his boots.